Second Guessing

Sometimes (by which I mean, honestly, "a lot of times"), I second-guess the photo I've chosen for a particular day on the photoblog.  I usually post the next day's photo the night before, queuing up several days if I'm going to be busy or out of town, choosing a photo that I think--at the time--has interesting composition and subject matter and looks great.  But then, sometime the next day or week or even  month--I'll look at the photo and be like "what the hell was I thinking?".  Ninety-nine percent of the time I catch my mistaken choice too late, once the photo has been published.  And, since I'm not a fan of rewriting history, I let it stand and make myself promise to do better next time.

Only rarely do I get a chance to fix my mistake before it's "too late".  Take last night, for instance.  I'd planned on going out to the roof of our parking garage late so that I could try to get some decent shots of the Moon while it was full and, for the first time in a few days, the skies were clear (or at least what passes for clear in Dallas-Fort Worth).  Knowing that I'd be up late shooting, I decided to go ahead and get a photo posted.  I'd traveled to Fort Worth on Saturday and had wandered around downtown there, taking photos like you do.  I noticed that Tarrant County was in the process of remodeling the clock tower on their courthouse, so I took a few frames from the roof of a parking garage several blocks away, unsure of how usable they'd be backlit against the stormy grey sky.  So, then, last night, I was surprised to find that they had a nice silhouetted effect that brought out the intricate details of the construction scaffolding and proceeded to choose one to process and post.  Unfortunately, in my haste, I chose poorly.  The frame I chose showed the scaffold on the left side and a crane on the right.  At the time, I think my thoughts were that these two subjects--while not traditionally composed--would balance each other out and make for an interesting comparison between the pieces of scaffold and the framework of the crane.  So I posted it.

And went about my business.  I shot the Moon. Came inside, showered off the humidity and downloaded and reviewed my Moon shots.  Then went to bed, reading some of my favorite photo-related sites and forums on my iPad.  Then I started to fall asleep.  And, as I lay there about to succumb to the Sleep Monster, it suddenly occurred to me "I'm about to publish a crap photo".  So I leaped out of bed to my computer and chose another photo that was basically the same as the one I'd chosen, but used a strong centered composition--something one normally avoids but I think works well in this situaation--that focused on the clock tower scaffolds alone.  Processed and published, I went to bed.

And, now, almost 9 hours later, I'm still happy with my choice.  Here's the photo I ended up posting on the photoblog:

And here's the misfortunate first choice:

So, did I make the right choice?

The point being, never be afraid to second-guess yourself.  Oftentimes, our first instincts aren't the right ones, despite what conventional wisdom says.